Africa in Stereo

Tsitsi Ella Jaji is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Pennsylvania.

Africa in Stereo raises the bar with new insights into both the sonic and visual realms of art. Transcriptions, performance, poetry, print and new media formats elucidate how Africans on the continent and in the diaspora have been engaged in a continuous dialogue and exchange of cultural particulars throughout the twentieth century. A major contribution is the author's willingness to move beyond a particular village or ethnic group (conventional units of ethnographic analysis) and focus instead on South Africa, Senegal and Ghana, drawing from an interesting array of archival materials to highlight and tease out the forces that made the impulse towards solidarity between Africa and the diaspora possible.

• Table of Contents ; One: Stereomodernism And Amplifying The Black Atlantic ; Two: Sight Reading: Early Black South African Transcriptions of Freedom ; Three: Negritude Musicology: Poetry, Performance and Statecraft in Senegal ; Four: What Women Want: Selling Hi-Fi in Consumer Magazines and Film ; Five: "Soul to Soul": Echo-locating Histories of Slavery and Freedom from Ghana ; Six: Pirate's Choice: Hacking into (Post-)Pan-African Futures ; Epilogue: Singing Songs ; Bibliography ; Notes